Saturday, January 30, 2010

Shrimp Season Begins

It's been cold again after a pouring rain that washed away our snow and cleared the ice from the driveway. There was flooding in some of the rivers, but the ice breakers have cleared the way. Of course the smelt shack owners that had to move their fishing spots, were disgruntled. But better disgruntled than sunk to the bottom.
Yesterday was a blustery day so the shrimp boats didn't go. It's still pretty breezy this morning, but they went anyway. Some boats drag for shrimp. but Jeff and Arnie use shrimp traps. They are slightly larger and heavier than lobster traps and more difficult in that rather than open the doors and pull out the lobsters, the shrimp traps must be lifted over the head and shaken to release the scrumptious little crustaceans. That is a 75 lb trap and (hopefully) 50 -75 lbs of shrimp. It makes my back hurt just thinking about it....
Wait, Jeff just got home - it's 1 pm. He says it was 'Bitter' when asked. And they missed the truck, cause they were late. So Arnie could haul 6 more pair. That means instead of 67 cents, they'll get 57 cents. So he lost $240 because of those last traps. The catch was 1440 lbs.... Wow.
They "made ice all day' which means they had to cover all the trays with tarps to keep the shrimp from freezing. They are trying to haul half the gear every other day, because the buyers truck is leaving at 11 am, so they must be in and unloaded by then.
What hard, heavy, cold and dangerous work! Jeff didn't even bring any shrimp home. He said he couldn't look at them any more today, but would bring some home tomorrow.

No comments:

Post a Comment